cornelius

i'm smart but she's smarter, a voice remembered, looking for a chance to run away. i'm stumbling backward through my 20s, tripping over tentacles, remebering to forget, getting by, and she's playing guitar, writing poems about patricide, going to europe without me.

i almost didn't remember, that is to say i forgot, i forgot how good she looked in her neckties, how dark her mestizo ways stick her out in a crowd, a jet set where's waldo. she's a radio head, and i'm stuck in my wild world. she's writing songs and i'm drawing cartoons, she's sanguine, liquid, and i'm the air up there, waiting for a lightning bolt to knock some substance into me, give me a direct purpose.

she's suffocating and i want to drown, i need to know what she knows, i need her to know that i want to know. if i had stayed behind, i'd be doing all i could to get away... it was the best thing i ever did, but i didn't know she felt that way, i didn't know i was leaving her behind. i didn't know just how cool she was going to be.

her mad writings light a fire under me, make me want to be a better human, not to impress her, but to bring myself up to that level... she's done so much with so little, and i've been standing in the shadows for far too long.

they say old friends are better left in the past, but they're wrong.

-bobby